


explaining is an admission of failure

by hearteyesfordays



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Fist Fights, M/M, Missing Scene, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 21:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearteyesfordays/pseuds/hearteyesfordays
Summary: Boxing Day.





	explaining is an admission of failure

**Author's Note:**

> Title and end notes from "Little Beast" by Richard Siken.

  
  
  
Boris coaxes him out of the hotel room, eventually.

They spend Boxing Day in Boris's apartment, Judy Garland warbling on the television while Theo books his plane ticket from the couch: Antwerp to NYC, KLM Air, a seat as close to the cockpit as possible, so he can pretend there aren't as many people surrounding him as there are.

“Why are you in such a rush, Potter?” Boris sighs as he peers over Theo's shoulder. “I am always seeing the back of you.” He'd crossed the room so silently that the nearness of his voice startles Theo, makes his pulse jump under his fever-drunk languor. 

Boris sighs again when Theo clicks the confirmation, his breath gusting across Theo's neck. He taps his knuckles against Theo's temple. “Foolish. You are weak from illness. You want _rest_, not airports.”

Theo jerks his head away. “I _want_ to go home. I told you before.”

“Home, yes.” Boris smiles without showing his teeth, an old habit he'd never broken, even though he'd paid thousands for his perfect Swedish veneers. “To see your old poofter and the girl.” He snakes warm fingers around Theo's wrist. “You will answer one question please, for your old friend Borya. What makes her special?

“She is not so beautiful,” Boris continues, “not like Snowflake. Is she so clever and funny? Does she warm you like sunshine?” His high must be wearing off; he's sleepy-eyed and sincere, the way he sometimes used to get: Life Philosopher Boris.

“I—” Theo stops. “She writes me letters. She loves music. She makes me these mix CDs that are just—” He shrugs. He knows he's not explaining well. What could he say about Pippa? That she was the one good thing in his life, the perfect untouched piece of _before_ that he had somehow managed to hold on to? He can still see it when he closes his eyes, her bright hair like a beacon calling to him, one step forward, another—and then it all came tumbling down. “I used to think of her like a fairytale, after she went away. Rapunzel in her tower.”

Boris flings Theo's hand back at him. “You tell many fairytales, Potter. Little Red is the princess, you are the pauper, and I am the bad big wolf.”

“It's the big bad wolf. And you're mixing metaphors again,” Theo says curtly. Something in his tone recalls his mother, the way she'd speak to his father when he went on a tear.

Boris mutters something in Ukrainian, then turns and drops to his knees in front of the couch. He claps a hand against Theo's cheek, grip so tight it hurts. “Letters,” he says. “I have written you many letters. Two even sent!” He holds up two fingers. “She makes you music CDs. I got your _ptitsa_ back, I made it safe for you!”

“You stole it from me.” Theo doesn't like to think of it, the feeling he'd had, peeling layers of packing tape off of his most carefully guarded secret, a high school civics textbook. And he'd known then. He can't imagine the dead-hearted shock if he'd peeked last year, or five years before that, or one of those last lonely nights in Vegas. He doesn't want to.

“Yes,” Boris nods. “I take it, you say nothing. I say sorry, you say nothing. I make it right, you say nothing also! What do you want, if you hate me so much? Blood?” He shoves at Theo's shoulders. “Hit me, then!”

“Stop it.”

“Hit me!” Boris shouts again, and then sucker punches him when Theo does nothing.

Theo clocks him in the jaw. Boris's head snaps back. He spits blood at him, laughing. Theo tackles him onto the carpet, hits him again. He can taste blood. Blood on his knuckles, blood on Boris's face, same as that day on the playground in Vegas. He pulls up short, fist in the air.

Boris smiles. Blood in his teeth. “Is this what you wanted, Potter?”

Maybe it is.

Blood in his mouth, salt and metal on his tongue as he kissed Boris under the punishing desert sun. That one he remembers, for all of his equivocations.

Boris has him by the wrist again.

He sits back on his heels, suddenly exhausted. “I don't want to fight you, Boris,” he says wearily. “You're my brother.” Isn't that what Boris had said himself, had told everybody, Gyuri and Myriam and fucking _Horst_, that Theo was his brother?

Boris makes one of his derisive Russian noises. “I am your brother like Little Red is your sister. That is how I am your brother.”

Blood pooling on the street, the look on his face, blood and a gun and a body between them. 

Blood on his coat sleeve under Theo's improvised tourniquet, pulling him in by the scarf around his neck, a frantic kiss over the gearshift, eyes locked as Boris pushed him toward the door. _Go!_

Theo looks away. “I have to pack,” he says, though he has hardly anything with him. “My flight's in the morning.” He leaves Boris lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. Face against the asphalt, no cars in sight, leave me here to die.

He calls for a cab to take him to the airport. Cab at the end of his empty cul-de-sac, his face in Boris's hands, mouth against his, _I love you_. I love you. I love you.

He doesn't say goodbye.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>   
What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.  
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—  
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood  
on the first four knuckles.  
We pull our boots on with both hands  
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do  
is stand on the curb and say _Sorry_  
_about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine._


End file.
